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Topic: More Army Builder Packs to Follow? (Read 7677 times)

So with all these Clonetrooper Packs appearing at EE, what are the chances that more will follow? I think this may be testing the market for future packs. Although the price may give Hasbro the wrong idea when not as many are sold because of the inflated price. Hopefully more will show up in local retail as exclusives at a much cheaper price.

They do them for $20-$25 a set (not a penny more), then perhaps... I'm even all for them only being done after the figure for within them is done and put out in the basic line ona single card...

SA (insert army builder name here) figure goes to basic line, then gets mass release in a 4-pack for $25 or less... That'd be kick ass, but with this precedent being set forth by Entertainment Earth and Hasbro, then I'm skeptical if it's such a good idea anymore.

Something, possibly even THE thing, I've always wanted was pretty much destroyed compeltely by severe price gouging. To say I'm disappointed this day in collecting is a major understatement.

What if they were VOTC stormies in a plain box mailer? What would you pay for those? Would $34.99 be outrageous for a four pack of those? It would be below retail, though admitedly, perhaps not low enough given the lack of fancy VOTC packaging.

I've firmly believed that VOTC was $5 worth of packaging (stretched of course... I don't believe it literally was $5 worth of packaging per se, but I can buy into it being a legitimate reason for costs higher than $5 per figure), and a $5 figure.

That was my take on VOTC though... I think Super poseable figures are $5 - $6 figures irregardless, especially army builders, and I'm "accepting" (not fond) of the packaging excuse. Given what it was, it wasn't simple, it wasn't produced in quantities as high as some basic product, and so I can bite on it...

So with that said, 4 VOTC Stormies in a white mailer box are a $20-$25 set to me as far as personal value goes, and I'd say that overall cost in producing that # would be reasonable at that price while still making lots of profit in my view, since its larger fixed costs would be steadily depreciating and increasing its margin of return then on each unit sold...

If it got to be more than that price though, I'd have to start considering its worth to me personally, and like with the Clones I'd be less likely to pay the higher price.

However it's classic so it'd draw me in a little more as far as my interest went, but that's personal opinion of value rather than anything based on precedent or whatnot.

I was willing to buy $10 VOTC Stormies though... If I'd run into them in droves I wouldn't have bought tons, but I did trade and pick up some from people online though.

At $20 - $25 I'd buy lots of sets. At more than that (dependant on price) I'd get 1 or 2 sets... At $10 per figure, or $9.50 or so, I'd likely be going with 1 or 2 sets... Maybe only 1 since I do have some VOTC's here already.

That's fair. Next question: Are plain figures like Stormie's cheaper to produce than more colorful figures such as Boba Fett? I'm sure over the run of a piece the costs become minimal, but isn't a straight white and black figure pretty much as cheap as you can get?

Anyone notice these are ATOC clones vs. ROTS clones? I've checked out of army building based on George's modification of base troopers.

I liked that Kenner stormies didn't fall out of favor as the OT progressed. Sure, a specialized trooper was introduced for Hoth and Endor (and the Royal Guard), but the imperial uniform, whether trooper or officer generally didn't dramatically mod over the trilogy.

The red battle droid evolution annoyed me - sure, more time elapsed between EP1 and EP2 than between any of the OT (and they were on Geonosis with the Trade Union), but the exclusion of plain BD's in the arena doesn't fit for me, didn't the Nemoidians bring their army to the party? I liked that Stormtroomers were used throughout ESB and ROTJ, and that we even saw Stormtroopers on Endor with biker scouts. They weren't exclusive of one another... Especially during the Emporer's arrival on the DS2.

I miss the OT days. I feel like the ATOC clones and ROTS clones won't even belong on the same shelf.

Logged

"Regime change, like charity, begins at home." - Ira Glass, This American Life

And mine are kept on separate shelves. OT on one, one third for each movie's figures, same for PT - one shelf, divided in thirds.

I spent the longest time telling myself not to army build with clones and I did pretty well. Canadian distribution helped, I only ever found four preview white clones at retail. Lots of red clones arrived, but an army of higher ranking soldiers over few grunts kept me from doing much.

I tend to always accept army builders in trading lists, so I just proceeded to add then to lists whenever it occurred. Then I stumbled across some folks selling loose clones for relatively cheap ($2 a piece) so I bought them. Then I added the clone three packs to my list when they came out. Then the bonus packs with the clone wars figures came along. Next thing I knew I had, quite without open intent, built an army of about 40 clone troopers.

At that point I essentially threw in the towel and away we go. Big army of white, but hey, maybe Lucas will go back and modify the Emperor's arrival scene in ROTJ to include clones, then I'll be set

I think the battle droids were red in AOTC because they weren't painted yet. That's my take at least

Or they are made that way to match against the red Geonosis landscape. We'll be seeing the beige Battle Droids in ROTS though. I think the reason there are different colors is also because several different organizations own them and manufacture them, not just one government like the Empire.

As for the Clones - I wish they were all white like the Stormtroopers. I don't mind the evolution of the helmets, but do like the the OT ones the most. Next I like the ROTS "evolution" ones, and the AOTC ones are last. Still ok though.

For future 4-pks, I too wish they would sell them for $20.00... but for VOTC Stormtroopers I'd pay the EE price.

Nothing to do with the topic of army building here, I just wanted to give my opinion on the "red" battle droid topic.

I always assumed that the droids on Geonosis were red because of the environment. By that I don't mean that they paint them different colors because of where they were manufactured, but I always assumed that they weren't "finished" , like Scott mentioned, but I figured that instead of not being painted, they were just rough and attracted the red dust of the planet. Plus you could also make the argument that, like the older technology on Tatooine, they are obsolete and less care went into them aesthetically, since the Techno Union was pushing the Super Battle Droids and Destroyer Droids. Kind of like a car salesman who wants you to buy the best model they have, but he's still willing to set them next to the crappy used car to either A) sell a used car or B) to make the new cars look better in comparison.

It's all about salesmanship, I think, and Wat Tambor is the SW equivalent of Crazy Eddie.

On the issue of cost... I think it's a pretty safe bet that, in general, a mostly solid colored figure who is cast in his primary color costs less... Paint aps are generally a lesser cost though in the grand scheme too... Depends on the # of colors, the complexity, etc...

Like, for instances, there's camo paintjobs on some figures I buy... Some are complex, others aren't so much, but the complex ones probably cost more. Decals are another thing to think of too, like for instance the emblems on an X-Wing pilot's helmet which aren't necessarilly a paint application so much as a decal that's set into the figure.

I think paint's pretty negligible as far as it being an individual cost goes though. Production overall is a lot of little costs though, which are what add up... With a few big ones. The big ones usually stay fixed though, and wind up being littler costs when spread over a whole products run.

Like, for the 1:18 military line(s) I collect, they have a real fine balance as far as what planes to make. They have to figure how many units will SURELY sell and things... There's a huge debate raging right now because they're dumping the Jap. Zero, which fans want but the company says all the new toolings would be tough to justify what they feel what be limited sales... Especially because they rely heavily on repainting the vehicles, which works AOK most of the time, but with the Zero it wouldn't since there really weren't a ton of paint variations of it. It kinda came one color and that was that.

Anyway, that's that... I'd say Stormies are pretty simple paintjobs (little detail work on those helmets though), but in the end paint aps aren't the costliest production factor in and of themselves anyway.

And on the red battledroid issue...

I dunno. I thought EU was claiming they had a few different sort of generic colors for sort of generic placement of them. Green for one terrain, tan for another, red for another... I'm not sure about that of course, I just recall seeing those 3 colors in one of those Holo-Net News reports in Insider once.

I know in the production scenes of Battledroids in AOTC, you can see them being sprayed with something that's covering them... What it is, I dunno. They do match the coloring of geonosis though so it seems like it could easily be some vague attempt at making them tougher to spot.

That's been my thought on the paintjobs, but I don't know that anything has taken any great length to give it an official LFL explanation either... Anyone?